David McElroy

The church bus was dark and quiet as we rolled through the middle of Arkansas late at night. We were on the way back to Alabama from a youth mission trip to Oklahoma City. But I was terrified — with a racing heart and sweaty palms — because of what I was about to ask the beautiful woman sitting next to me.

Gail and I were both freshmen in college. We had known each other for years. I had had a crush on her when we were in junior high school, but she had become just another girl in my graduating class by the time we finished high school.

We had reconnected a few months before this because of a college class we shared. We had first started talking. Then we started spending time together. I had fallen for her — but I was terrified that maybe she just saw me as a friend.

The time had come for me to ask her if she was willing to have a romantic relationship with me.

I have no idea what I said, but I somehow got the words out. She gladly accepted the offer. My heart was full and I thought my life would never be the same again.

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If my parents had left me millions of dollars, I doubt I’d have overlooked it.

Instead, they left me something far more valuable — and I had overlooked that inheritance for most of my life. At least consciously.

My family was anything but a model of stability and mental health. My father suffered from what I now know was narcissistic personality disorder. My mother left us when I was 5 years old and drifted in and out of my life for years afterward. I’ve written extensively about both of those realities because they shaped me in profound ways — rarely for the better.

But life has a way of refusing to fit neatly into the categories we’d prefer. The same parents who left me with painful memories also left me with an inheritance that has quietly benefited me every day of my adult life.

Neither of them left me wealth. They left me something much harder to recognize because it became so completely woven into my daily life that I stopped noticing it.

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I was trying to write Monday evening when little gray paws appeared on the edge of my chair. Oliver was purring as he climbed onto the chair.

My MacBook was in my lap and I was hard at work. But Oliver started kneading his paws up and down on my belly as he tried to wedge himself into a space that was already full. He wanted attention.

And what was more important to me? Some work that could wait a few more minutes or some quality time with a purring cat who loves me?

I put the MacBook onto the nearby bed and let Oliver take over my lap. He draped himself over me and looked up expectantly. He wanted me to rub him and he made that clear. When I complied with his wishes, the purring got louder.

As I sat here letting a warm gray bundle of fur dictate my schedule for a few minutes, it occurred to me that this wasn’t the most efficient use of my time — but it was important to both of us in ways that are hard to explain.

We spend so much of our lives asking whether something is productive that we sometimes forget to ask whether it’s meaningful.

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